The Brown Study Page 7

  VII

  BROWN'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES

  "There, Tom, how's that? Does it droop as much as the one on theother side?"

  Tom Kelcey, aged fourteen, squinted critically at the long festoon ofground-pine between the centre of the chimney-breast and the angle of thedingy old oak-beamed ceiling.

  "Drop her a couple of inches, Misther Brown," he suggested. "No, not somuch. There, that's the shtuff. Now you've got her, foine and dandy."

  Brown stepped down from the chair on which he had been standing, andstood off with Tom to view the effect.

  "Yes, that's exactly right," said he, "thanks to your good eye. The roomlooks pretty well, eh? Quite like having a dinner party."

  "It's ilegant, Misther Brown, that's what it is," said a voice in thedoorway behind them. "Tom bhoy, be afther takin' the chair back to thekitchen for him."

  Mrs. Kelcey, mother of Tom, and next-door neighbour to Brown, advancedinto the room. She was laden with a big basket, which Brown, perceiving,immediately took from her.

  "Set it down careful, man," said she. "The crust on thim pies is thatdelicate it won't bear joltin'. I had the saints' own luck with 'em thistoime, praise be."

  "That's great," said Brown. "But I haven't worried about that. You neverhave anything else, I'm sure."

  Mrs. Kelcey shook her head in delighted protest.

  "The table is jist the handsomest I iver laid eyes on," she asserted,modestly changing the subject.

  "It is pretty nice, isn't it?" agreed Brown warmly, surveying the tablewith mixed emotions. When he stopped to think of what Mrs. HughBreckenridge would say at sight of that table, set for the Thanksgivingdinner her brother, Donald Brown, was giving that afternoon, heexperienced a peculiar sensation in the region of his throat. He waspossessed of a vivid sense of humour which at times embarrassed himsorely. If it had not been that his bigness of heart kept his love offun in order he would have had great difficulty, now and then, incomporting himself with necessary gravity.

  Mrs. Kelcey herself had arranged that table, spending almost the entirepreceding day in dashing about the neighbourhood, borrowing from Brown'sneighbours the requisite articles. Brown's own stock of blue-and-whiteware proving entirely inadequate, besides being in Mrs. Kelcey's eyes byno means fine enough for the occasion, she had unhesitatinglyrequisitioned every piece of china she could lay hands on in theneighbourhood. She had had no difficulty whatever in borrowing more thanenough, for every woman in the block who knew Brown was eager to lend herbest. The result was such an array of brilliantly flowered plates andcups and dishes of every style and shape, that one's gaze, once rivetedthereon, could with difficulty be removed.

  When Brown had first conceived this festival it had been with the ideaof sending to the nearest city for a full equipment, if an inexpensiveone, of all the china and glass, linen and silver necessary for theserving of the meal. But upon thinking it over it occurred to him thatsuch an outlay would not only arouse his new friends' suspicion of hisfinancial resources, it would deprive them of one of the chief joys insuch a neighbourhood as this in which he was abiding--that of thepersonal sharing in the details of the dinner's preparation and the proudlending of their best in friendly rivalry.

  Therefore the table, as it now stood before him in all but completereadiness for the feast, bore such witness to the warmth of esteem inwhich the neighbourhood held him, not to mention its resourcefulness infitting together adjuncts not originally intended for partnership, asmust have touched the heart of a dinner-giver less comprehending thanDonald Brown, late of St. Timothy's great and prosperous parish.

  To begin with, the table itself had been set up in its place in the frontroom by Tim Lukens the carpenter, who when he was sober was one of thecleverest of artisans. Starting with two pairs of sawhorses andcontinuing with smooth pine boards, he had constructed a table of goodlyproportions and of a solidity calculated to withstand successfully thedemand likely to be made upon it. Over this table-top Mrs. Kelcey hadlaid--without thought, it must be admitted, of any intermediary paddingsuch as certain mistaken hostesses consider essential--three freshly andpainstakingly laundered tablecloths, her own, Mrs. Murdison's, and Mrs.Lukens's best, cunningly united by stitches hardly discoverable except bya too-searching eye.

  The foundations thus laid, the setting of the table had been a delightfultask for Mrs. Kelcey, assisted as she was by Mrs. Murdison, whofrequently differed from her in points of arrangement but who yieldedmost of them upon hearing, as she frequently did, Mrs. Kelcey's verbalbadge of office: "Misther Brown put me in charge, Missus Murdison. Hesays to me, he says, 'Missus Kelcey, do jist as ye think best.'" Togetherthe two had achieved a triumph, and the table now stood forth glowinglyready for its sixteen guests, from the splendid bunch of scarletgeraniums in an immense pink and blue bowl with an Indian's head on oneside, to the sixteen chairs, no two exactly alike, which had beenobtained from half as many houses.

  As for the dinner itself, there was no patchwork about that. Brownhimself had supplied the essentials, trusting that the most of his guestscould have no notion whatever of the excessively high cost of turkeysthat season, or of the price of the especial quality of butter and eggswhich he handed over to Mrs. Kelcey to be used in the preparation of thedishes which he and she had decided upon. That lady, however, had hadsome compunctions as she saw the unstinted array of materials anastonished grocer's boy had delivered upon her kitchen table two daysbefore the dinner, and had expressed herself to Mrs. Murdison asconcerned lest Mr. Brown had spent more than he could well afford.

  "'Tis the big hearrt of him that leads his judgment asthray," she said,exulting none the less, as she spoke, over the prospect of handling allthose rich materials and for once having the chance to display herskilled cookery. "I said as much as I dared, lest I hurrt his pride,but--'Tis but wanct a year, Missus Kelcey,' says he, an' I said no more."

  The thrifty Scotswoman shook her head. "The mon kens nae mair aboot thecost o' things than a cheild," said she. "But 'twould be, as ye say, apeety to mak' him feel we dinna appreciate his thocht o' us."

  So they had done their best for him, and the result was a wonderfulthing. To his supplies they had surreptitiously added small delicacies oftheir own. Mrs. Kelcey contributed a dish of fat pickles, luscious to theeye and cooling to the palate. Mrs. Murdison brought a jar of marmaladeof her own making--a rare delicacy; though the oranges were purchased ofan Italian vender who had sold out an over-ripe stock at a pittance. Mrs.Lukens supplied a plate of fat doughnuts, and Mrs. Burke sent over a bigplatter of molasses candy. Thus the people of the neighbourhood had cometo feel the affair one to which not only had they been bidden, but inwhich they were all in a way entertainers.

  The boys of the district, also, had their share in the fun. Though notinvited to the dinner proper, they had been given a hint that if theydropped in that evening after their fathers and mothers had departedthere might be something left--and what boys would not rather "drop in"after that fashion, by the back door, than go decorously in at the frontone? So they had been eager to furnish decorations for the party,according to Brown's suggestion, by going in a body to the woods threemiles away and bringing back a lavish supply of ground-pine. They hadspent two happy evenings helping Brown make this material into ropes,while he told them stories, and there was not a boy of them all who wouldnot cheerfully have lent his shoulders to the support of the dinner-tablethroughout the coming meal, if it had suddenly been reported that TimLukens's sawhorses were untrustworthy.

  "Now, Misther Brown, I'll be goin' home to see to the twins and get meman to dhress himsilf, an' thin I'll be back. Have no fear--av'rythin'sdoin' foine, an' the turrkey's an ilegant brown jist beginnin' to show.If I'm not back in tin minutes ye moight baste him wanct, but have noother care."

  "I'll be delighted to baste him, thank you," Brown responded. "And Ihave no cares at all, with you in charge. I only hope you won't be tootired to enjoy the dinner. You've been busy every minute since dawn."

  "Shure, 'tis t
he labour of love makes the worrk aisy," she responded, andthen, attacked by a sudden and most unusual wave of shyness, disappearedout of the door.

  Brown, standing with his back to the fire, smiled to himself. Well heknew that since the suffering three-year-old twin son of the Kelceys hadspent the night in his pitiful arms and in the morning taken a turn forthe better, the entire Kelcey family would have made martyrs ofthemselves for his sake. It was quite true that that sort of thing, ashis sister, Mrs. Breckenridge, had intimated, was not precisely inaccordance with the prescription of Dr. Bruce Brainard, distinguishedspecialist. But if that night had been his last, Donald Brown could nothave spent it in a way more calculated to give him pleasure as he closedhis eyes. Surely, since life was still his, the love of the Kelceys wasnot to be despised.

  As he dressed for the dinner Brown considered his attire carefully. Hecould not venture to wear anything calculated to outshine the apparelof his guests, and yet to don the elbow-worn, shiny-backed blue serge ofhis everyday apparel seemed not to do them quite honour enough. He hadnot many clothes with him, but he had brought one suit of rough homespun,smart indeed from the viewpoint of the expensive tailor who had made it,but deceivingly unconventional to the eye of the uninitiated. This he puton, taking particular pains to select a very plain cravat, and to fastenin it with care the scarf-pin bestowed upon him by old Benson, the littlewatchmaker on the corner below. Through the buttonhole in the lapel ofhis coat he drew a spicy-smelling sprig of ground-pine, chantingwhimsically as he did so a couplet from Ben Jonson:

  "Still to be neat, still to be drest,As you were going to a feast."